As long as I can remember I have yearned for community. Most living beings, human or otherwise, have the same yearning. The Buddha recognized this, creating the fourfold sangha as a ground for liberation. Over the last twenty or twenty-five years I have been living in the Berkeley Zen Center community, and finding home, work, and close friendship at International Network of Engaged Buddhists and Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

After the 2009 Chiang Mai INEB meeting some old friends spent two days at Ouyporn Khuankaew’s Mae Rim center, talking informally about the nature of sustainable community and socially engaged Buddhism. We began to plan an INEB “Think Sangha” study tour of India, where we might investigate the particularities of Indian Buddhist communities, taking time, as well, to reflect on our inner experience and our own lives in community.

Think Sangha evolved in the mid-90s as a Buddhist social analysis group emerging from INEB. Over the years we have met physically a number of times in Thailand, Japan, and Hawaii, maintained friendships and community with visits and internet banter, and published a number of periodicals and two books. Membership is informal and diverse, with women and men from across Asia and the West.

The challenge was to look at sustainable Buddhist community, externally and internally. That is: community we are involved in, and diverse communities in India including Dalit Buddhists, other expressions of a new Buddhist “revival” in the land of Buddha’s birth, and Tibetan communities in exile. We hoped, also, to create a kind of community among ourselves as we worked and traveled together, embodying harmonious qualities of sangha that live at the heart of our vision.

In March we came together for a two week study tour in India — as we had planned at our Mae Rim meeting — with Somboon Cungprampree (Moo — INEB’s executive secretary), Jill Jameson, Ven. Kalupahana Piyaratna Thera, Ouyporn Khuankaew, Anchalee Kurutach, David Loy, PaPa Phyo, Poolchawee Ruangwichatorn (Nong), Rev. Alan Senauke, Wintomo Tjandra, Ven. Paisan Visalo, Jon Watts, with Mangesh Dahwale in Nagpur and Prashant Varma at Deer Park — representing India, Thailand, Australia, Japan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the U.S.

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We met up in Mumbai, a dizzying maximum city of impossible contrasts: sprawling slums and garish wealth. On our first evening we divided into two groups, each going to a different Biuddhist slum settlement in the city. After driving north and a little east in nerve-wracking traffic towards the edge of the city, we arrived at a streetside vihara in the poor community of Bhandup. The “temple” is a cement box, about 8ft by 10ft, with a small Buddha and a larger bust of Dr. Ambedkar, the Buddhist liberator of India’s untouchables. It seemed to be an unlikely place for a gathering, but within minutes people streamed in.

Ven. Kalupahana and I made offerings in the vihara. The children chanted passionately and full-voiced. It brought me to tears. We moved outside to offer brief dharma words and meet with the larger community. Several hundred people had gathered, three or four generations in their fine clothes: women in sari or salwar kameez, men in slacks and dress shirts.

After puja and talks we went around a corner, down a four-foot wide alleyway into a warren of houses and intersecting alleys. Each narrow doorway opened into a family residence. The rooms were no more than 10ft by 10 or 12ft. Some homes had a second storey as a sleeping loft. Four to six or seven people might live in this space. The homes were immaculately clean and supremely organized with mats for sitting, space for cooking on a single gas burner, neatly stacked metal plates, bowls, cups, and cooking utensils. We were welcomed from house to house for an hour. People were proud to show off their children — all avidly pursuing education. The walls were painted bright colors with Buddhist posters, and each home had an altar with Buddha images and family photographs.

Many of these families came to Mumbai and Buddhism over the last 40 years to change their social identity — hence their lives — by escaping the rigid caste oppression and violence that still marks rural life. Buddhism means social and spiritual liberation for them. You can see this in the joy and generosity we encountered despite circumstances of poverty. Poverty is one thing. Dignity and self-respect are something else. They do not have to contradict each other.

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From Mumbai we flew to Nagpur — India’s geographical center — staying five days at Nagaloka, the Nagarjuna Training Institute on the city’s outskirts. Students and staff met us at the gate with garlands and showers of blossoms. Nagaloka is a school for sixty or seventy youth from oppressed communities around India learning the essential teachings of Buddhism, training in meditation and puja, studying social work and the basics of community organizing. The school’s atmosphere is quiet, cool in the evenings, with a sixty-foot golden striding Buddha as the focal point of the campus.

The students are young and bright — averaging 20 or 21, full of fun, eager to learn and simply to connect with us. Our sessions were punctuated by songs and play. Nagaloka emphasizes a strong sitting practice with very good posture. Meditation is usually anapansati/mindfulness of breathing or metta bhavana/cultivating lovingkindness. The daily liturgy is chanted in Pali — refuges, five precepts, and several other recitations, sung or recited in strong voices. Men and women each have separate dharma halls, coming together on special occasions.

Over four days we led workshops, practiced, and hung out with the Nagaloka students. On the first day we heard a presentation on the history and condition of India’s Dalit/untouchables, as well as the development of Ambedkarite Buddhism since the 50s and the formation of Nagaloka. Then we heard from the students themselves.

Story after story echoed each other. The students are mostly from rural areas all over India. Few of them have had any previous experience of Buddhism, coming from nominally Hindu families — although local temples back home were off limits to them. Many of the students from Tamil Nadu and other areas with strong local culture and language came to Nagaloka with no fluency in Hindi, the school’s operating language. On arrival they had to get up and running in a new language, new religious practices, new food, and new companions. Those who find their way to Nagaloka aspire to education and another kind of life, one of service to society. They are clearly in the flow of personal transformation

On another day each of us from Think Sangha had a chance to talk about our lives and our respective work. We included Lama Rangdral — a visiting Tibetan teacher from the West to join the presentations. As an African-American, he spoke from the heart about the destructive and still-present realities of racism in the west, and what we can learn from the groundbreaking work of Dr. Ambedkar on caste and discrimination. That afternoon we organized topical small groups on gender justice, Buddhist economics, transforming anger, living an engaged Buddhist life, and social mobilization — as much learning from the students’ experiences as “teaching” them.

For support and hospitality we thank Mangesh Dahiwale, Dh. Lokamitra, the Nagaloka staff, and the bright students of Nagaloka. Their generosity is so great and natural .

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We flew from Nagpur to Delhi; in the evening we boarded the overnight Jammu Mail Express At Pathankot, close to the border with Pakistan, four cars carried us to Deer Park in the small North Indian town of Bir. Bir is in Himachal Pradesh, Kangra district, about two hours south and east of Dharamsala, right up against the first towering wall of the Himalayas.

There is a Tibetan colony in Bir, one of the largest in north India. Monasteries are visible near and far, brilliantly painted gold or red, adorned with rainbow ornamentation. In late afternoon, monks of all ages fill the streets and shops. Tibetan merchants run small groceries, western clothing stalls, internet cafes, and tea shops. With its the dramatic landscape and prevailing winds, Bir has become a famous spot for paragliding. Huge nylon contraptions — hybrid of kite and parachute — prowl the skies each afternoon.

Deer Park Institute was founded in the mid 2000s by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, the multi-talented teacher, writer, and filmmaker. It is a self-described center for the study of India’s wisdom traditions. Deer Park’s orientation is inclusive and eclectic, representing Dzongsar’s wide mind and interests. There are programs on meditation, photography, writing, textual study, the environment, and engaged Buddhism.

Our INEB friend Prashant Varma is director. He is a student of Dzongsar and a man of great energy and capacity. At Deer Park while we were there, Prashant seemed to be everywhere at once as host, administrator, internet fixer, and travel agent. Prashant is 33, from a well-to-do Bombay family, married to Jennifer Yo from Taiwan, one of those fortunate relationships that flowered at an INEB conference.

We stayed at Deer Park for nearly a week, which included three days of program with fifteen or twenty people from various Indian Buddhist communities. Our dual task was to learn about their practice and situation, and to share our understanding of socially engaged Buddhism, considering its actual and potential place in modern India. This all went very well, and strong links were forged, particularly with young Indians. We strongly encouraged people to join us at this October’s INEB conference in Bodhgaya.

We also had a chance to visit nearby Tibetan monasteries. The sprawling monastery in Chauntra, a few miles from Bir, was completed in 2004, replacing the older monastery which then became Deer Park. More than 400 monks here study and debate Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. We went to Dongyu Gatsal Ling, an inspiring nunnery run by the charismatic Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Originally from Great Britain, Tenzin spent thirteen years living and practicing alone in a mountain cave, summer and winter, emerging to become a powerful teacher and a voice for Himalayan women and nuns.

Leaving Bir we stopped for lunch and conversation with Lama Karma Dechen at Jangchub Samten Ling, a small training center for nuns in the Kagyu tradition. Her monastery is now in its seventh cycle of traditional three-year retreats. Karma Dechen and I met at a 1999 INEB conference in Sri Lanka. I clearly recall her physical presence, her joy and blunt speaking. Twelve years later, she is much the same… and more.

Our group began to dwindle as people left for home. But seven or eight of us had a last night and day in Dharmasala, a fascinating place. Narrow streets are lined with shops selling all manner of Tibetan goods. Monks and nuns are everywhere. The nearly vertical town has a makeshift and temporary feeling, appropriate to the Tibetans’ guest status in India. Western trekkers and dharma bums are much in evidence. It was easy to leave Dharmasala; not so easy to say goodbye to our Think Sangha friends.

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In the course of investigating Indian Buddhism we found there are really many Indian Buddhisms: various Dalit/Ambedkarite Buddhists (which includes our TBMSG friends in Maharastra), exiled Tibetans in the north and south, other Himalayan groups practicing in the Tibetan tradition, Goenka-based vipassana practitioners, the Young Buddhist Society in Uttar Pradesh, the Mahabodhi Society, middle class Buddhists in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai, and on and on. Such diversity, which is the nature of Indian society, is invigorating. But the challenge is that the Buddhist revival in the land of Buddha’s birth is factionalized and often mutually suspicious. Of course factionalism is not endemic to India. Still, given the marginal status of Indian Buddhists here, greater cooperation would serve people better.

Difference here is not so much in dharma practice itself but in beliefs and social factors: caste, gender, culture, poverty and wealth (hence access to resources), lay/monastic, etc. In each place, one or more of these factors is foremost. Different groups have opinions and judgments about each other. This is not what the Buddha had in mind. His early sangha was open and egalitarian. But there is an unfortunate human proclivity to form circles and institutions which inevitably have an inside and an outside. India’s ancient profusion of cultures and its jarring disparities of rich and poor are hard to bridge.

I know that what we saw are still first impressions. I don’t expect to get my mind around “India” in this lifetime. It feels like India is wrapping itself around my mind. So the Think Sangha did not come to conclusions. We do, however, wish to be allies to our Indian friends. To listen to them, advocate for them, find practice resources they can make use of, and skillfully offer what we understand from our own lives and practice.

But there was more to this journey than just talk. Most days we had time to take walks, drink milk tea, hang out, laugh, and simply be friends — letting new friendships take roots and old ones ripen. We also mourned for the people of Japan, as earthquake and tsunami led to a nuclear crisis that remains unresolved. All of us were deeply affected by the crisis.

This is the basis of Think Sangha — kalyanamitta. Real friendship grounded in shared dharma, unhindered by nationality, Buddhist tradition, or chronological age. Although I am not always at ease with circumstances or with myself, these two weeks of travel together have been remarkably harmonious. No visible squabbles among our group, even in the turmoil of Old Delhi station, or the dry dust of a four-hour drive on winding mountain roads. Practice is revealed in how each of us takes responsibility for our own irritability and pain. If there is a way one of us can help, help is offered. If someone needs to step back for space and recollection, we all understand that. Each of us has moments like this.